- last edited on by
ROGBot
Hi guys, I'm having a problem and before I do my next move I wanna be sure:
I have this laptop for over 4 1/2 years now (bought it January 2015). Two days ago, was playing Dota, I moved my laptop from one desk to another while I was playing and suddenly the game (and the whole PC) crashed (since I was in a hurry, didn't wait for the BSOD, I just performed a hard shutdown).
When I boot up I found that Nvidia GTX870m had been disabled by Windows cause of error 43... I followed a couple of guides (most of them involved installing/uninstalling drivers), and sometimes when I enabled the VGA, it kinda got recognized for a couple of minutes, and then suddenly the whole PC crashed with a BSOD (all of them different):
VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE (most of the time got this one)
DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION (just one time)
DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE (a couple times)
Sometimes, the VGA remained enabled after the crashes, so when the PC was booting up it crashed again (even before login into windows), or froze in the middle, then was able to log in, then crash... so my only choice was to disable VGA from device manager. Right now, I have 0 crashes for 2 days and counting, and a few times I tried to activate back the VGA and it doesn't even recognize it anymore, windows just stops it saying it has problems (Code 43)
By now I was pretty sure the VGA was dead.. but I wanted to go further, and since one of the things I read on google was it could be that the VGA was full of dust, I took the risk and proceeded to disassembly the whole Laptop to check how "dusted" the VGA was.
I was able to tear it apart completely, to the point that I could take out the heat sink which was quite dusty (nothing critical IMHO), cleaned it up, put new thermal paste, made sure the VGA was correctly connected into the PCI-E slot behind the motherboard (took it out and put it back), then assembled everything again.
After all this work, the problem is exactly THE SAME.
Further things I checked via software:
Furmark doesn't even recognize the VGA, only detetcs the intel 4600
GPU-Z detects it, but interestingly enough, can't show shaders, type of memory etc... some times it detecs the clocks, sometimes it doesn't. This is a photo as of right now, it doens't even show GPU clock
So I'm pretty sure my VGA is dead, but wanna know first if someone went through the same **** already , and if it's a time thing or if I really ****ed up moving my PC while the VGA was doing some hard work processing in the middle of the game
Also wanna know if it's viable to buy another 870m... I've seen that the sell on some websites for around 90 USD, which is not that expensive actually. I've already disassembled the whole PC, so I feel confident to buy another VGA to replace mine, but I also wonder if the VGA I will buy from this guys are like mine, 4 years old and possibly about to fail, or if they're.... "new"??. Is there anyplace where you can try to buy this part as "new"? does Asus sell it?
I have this laptop for over 4 1/2 years now (bought it January 2015). Two days ago, was playing Dota, I moved my laptop from one desk to another while I was playing and suddenly the game (and the whole PC) crashed (since I was in a hurry, didn't wait for the BSOD, I just performed a hard shutdown).
When I boot up I found that Nvidia GTX870m had been disabled by Windows cause of error 43... I followed a couple of guides (most of them involved installing/uninstalling drivers), and sometimes when I enabled the VGA, it kinda got recognized for a couple of minutes, and then suddenly the whole PC crashed with a BSOD (all of them different):
VIDEO_TDR_FAILURE (most of the time got this one)
DPC_WATCHDOG_VIOLATION (just one time)
DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE (a couple times)
Sometimes, the VGA remained enabled after the crashes, so when the PC was booting up it crashed again (even before login into windows), or froze in the middle, then was able to log in, then crash... so my only choice was to disable VGA from device manager. Right now, I have 0 crashes for 2 days and counting, and a few times I tried to activate back the VGA and it doesn't even recognize it anymore, windows just stops it saying it has problems (Code 43)
By now I was pretty sure the VGA was dead.. but I wanted to go further, and since one of the things I read on google was it could be that the VGA was full of dust, I took the risk and proceeded to disassembly the whole Laptop to check how "dusted" the VGA was.
I was able to tear it apart completely, to the point that I could take out the heat sink which was quite dusty (nothing critical IMHO), cleaned it up, put new thermal paste, made sure the VGA was correctly connected into the PCI-E slot behind the motherboard (took it out and put it back), then assembled everything again.
After all this work, the problem is exactly THE SAME.
Further things I checked via software:
Furmark doesn't even recognize the VGA, only detetcs the intel 4600
GPU-Z detects it, but interestingly enough, can't show shaders, type of memory etc... some times it detecs the clocks, sometimes it doesn't. This is a photo as of right now, it doens't even show GPU clock
So I'm pretty sure my VGA is dead, but wanna know first if someone went through the same **** already , and if it's a time thing or if I really ****ed up moving my PC while the VGA was doing some hard work processing in the middle of the game
Also wanna know if it's viable to buy another 870m... I've seen that the sell on some websites for around 90 USD, which is not that expensive actually. I've already disassembled the whole PC, so I feel confident to buy another VGA to replace mine, but I also wonder if the VGA I will buy from this guys are like mine, 4 years old and possibly about to fail, or if they're.... "new"??. Is there anyplace where you can try to buy this part as "new"? does Asus sell it?
jdfrench3 wrote:
Sounds like you flexed the motherboard/video card/display while moving the laptop while in operation. Something was shorted or is now open. Did you remove the display back? Take a close look at the display cable (the whole cable).
Are you able to try the various code 43 solutions found online (driver corruption fixes)?
Can you attach an external monitor and test?
Motherboard/video card replacement is not difficult. Finding a working motherboard/video card for sale is the difficult part. ASUS has no motherboards/video cards. Purchasing parts from an online vender will be hit or miss. More often than not, the parts being sold are going to be wrong or not working. Venders love to swap labels and sell you what ever item you need (you'll receive a different model part).
My advice would be to take your laptop to an ASUS certified repair center and have them do the work. It will be expensive but the chance of success will be much greater. Honestly, I doubt ASUS would even take on the job for lack of parts.
I think it may be time to look for a replacement laptop.
First of all thanks for answering!. I'll try to answer all questions carefully:
Sounds like you flexed the motherboard/video card/display while moving the laptop while in operation. Something was shorted or is now open. Did you remove the display back? Take a close look at the display cable (the whole cable).
Well, I opened the laptop and checked every single connection, and basically unplugged and plugged back every single one of them. Here there's a photo with the 3 cables that goes from the monitor to the laptop (a pair of thin black and white and the other with a blue tape on top)
Thinking about it, when I moved the laptop, in order to grab it I have a strong thought of pressing the area of the "blue tape" cable with my thumb... could it be that I ****ed up that connector? do I have a way to check it out? like I dunno, trying to run the pc with that cable unplugged? does someone know the actual function of that cable?. Thanks for noticing that up....
Are you able to try the various code 43 solutions found online (driver corruption fixes)?
Yes... I tried almost everything. DDU uninstall, re-install, automatically/manually, through windows update... I even had an old magnetic disk of this PC that I don't use anymore, so I checked it out (I don't use that disk since 2017). My computer was able to boot correctly, but same problem, Code 43, crashes, bsod, etc...
The only thing I didn't actually try is trying to install the drivers from Ubuntu, but since I tried with this old disk of mine that had a super old working fine driver and still got the exact same error, I basically assumed 100% it is a hardware problem now 😕
Can you attach an external monitor and test?
Dunno how would I do this, I mean, everyday I use 2 monitors (the laptop one + one HDMI connected external monitor). The connectors the laptop has are those I marked up in the photo so... I don't know how would I possibly use another monitor with those cables...
Replacing my notebook is in my plans already, but before, I wanna know if I will be able to replace the VGA and maybe for less than 100 dollars I can have a very decent laptop for backup. I Really thank you for pointing out that the cables from monitor-to-mobo could be messed up, I have to really check that blue tape cable... my only concern now is if I can try to make the computer run with that cable unplugged without making more damage
jdfrench3 wrote:
Match what you have in your laptop, part number for part number.
Are you not going to order a display cable? If your cable is bad, then when you attach it to your new video card and power the laptop up, pop goes another video card. $10-$15, might be worth the caution.
Good Luck
Oh I thought that if the cable was bad the new VGA was just going to show the same error but not destroy it... ok I'm ordering the cable too since it will be very cheap anyways, and I'll try it first (although to use this one I will have to disassembly the monitor)
BTW I have news from just now, I activated the VGA to see what happens and suddenly it worked!. Of coruse before being too happy first thing I did was open gpu-Z. Showed everything:
Then I opened Dota on it... the game worked fluently as it used to be... just to be sure I tried a sample game and started using a lot of spells in free mode to see if it crashes... after 2 or 3 minutes the fans started to get louder and suddenly the game completely froze for like 2 minutes. After this time being completely frozen, it came back alive, so just in case I closed the game. Checked VGA temps on gpu-z, and they were just above 60deg C...
Tried render test on GPU-Z... It worked...
I wanted to go further so I opened furmark Started a stress test for 870m (I've alredy done a stress test for HD4600 for one minute with no problems)
(fixed max temp for 90deg of course)
When the VGA got to 70deg some color points started to appear on screen (almost sure artifacts), loud fans, suddenly image froze, I tried to press ESC to cancel the test (76deg) so I got a black screen... the computer got stuck in black screen and fans slowly started to low down the speed. I couldn't do anything (tried open task manager, move mosue, etc etc) all I had was a mouse frozen and a black screen, so I made a hard shutdown. When I turned the PC on again, Code 43 was theere, and the VGA was disabled by windows... just in case, I manually disabled it too...
So I can 99% sure say it's my VGA saying goodbye and giving its last breath, hope you can give a last opinion about this, but I'll try what u said, cable first then VGA to make sure it's not the cable (although I'm pretty sure that it's the VGA). I will order both together since they will take some time to get here...
Thanks for all your fast answers!
